


I'm Yours

by TTMIYH



Series: You're Mine/I'm Yours [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Bulges and Nooks (Homestuck), Diplomacy, Dom/sub, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, F/F, Femdom, Femsub, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Mind Games, Partial Mind Control, Pheromones, Recreational Drug Use, Tentabulges (Homestuck), Unreliable Narrator, Xenophilia, You Don't Come Here For The Porn You Come Here For The Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:41:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29215086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TTMIYH/pseuds/TTMIYH
Summary: She knew a couple of facts about this species, she had seen news reports but deliberately hid herself away from pictures when she received her invitation to become a diplomat. To an outsider, they sounded fairly demonic, which is why it presented no surprise that the remaining dregs of Evangelical Christianity that had not adapted to the interstellar age were caught in an uproar about the whole scenario, but to Rose? An endless hall of fascination. Grey skin, fire-colored horns, yellow eyes. The basic body plan of a humanoid (what an incredibly strange coincidence), but any other xenobiological details she kept herself in the dark about.Didn't want to spoil the surprise, after all. She had, of course, received a dossier and read precisely none of it. When the elevator doors slid open, that was when she allowed herself the sight for the first time.Alternians. What an odd choice of name.[Updates every Thursday/Friday]
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Series: You're Mine/I'm Yours [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1343143
Comments: 11
Kudos: 45





	1. Circumambulate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RoxyPop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoxyPop/gifts).



> This fanfic is a spiritual sequel to You're Mine, and not a continuation. That particular Roxy and Meenah's story is, for my part in it, over. I hope you enjoy this next tale, of mind games, diplomacy, pain, and pleasure.
> 
> Thank you.

Elevators bored Rose, but, then again, so did many things.

Rose Lalonde was a woman of valleys - soaring mountainous passions followed by deep, flowing craters of boredom, inconsequential nothings pestering her ire like mosquitos at a bar-b-que. She produced approximately one best selling novel every 2-3 years, and only when stricken by a particularly powerful idea. In her own words, if the high concept did not grab her by the throat and begin strangling her, she was not very interested in it. Dozens of fleeting pitches, celebrities of minor status looking for ghostwriting, grabbling Hollywood executives looking to option her esoterica into a form more palatable to the screen than to the mind's eye. Boring nonsense, unworthy of even the slightest hint of her attention.

Still, that was the boredom of routine, while this was the boredom of tedium. Watching the outside world slowly drop away from you, becoming less and less real, a skybox painted onto the outer boundaries of your vision. People became ants became molecules became atoms, cars flattened into hitching .gif image frames, skyscrapers smearing against the horizon until they were paintings given only the slightest hint of parallax if she were to bob her head left or right, and the elevator continued its upward march, steady and rhythmic. If she were feeling grim today, she might compare it to the death march leading to execution. She had taken her Zoloft this morning, however, along with her Xanax, and was feeling a bit peachier. The elevator's motion, she decided in her authorial mind, was more like a military parade. The crinkling of gears and pulling of cable brought to mind the endless gyre of tank treads on concrete.

Her sun, familiar, yellow at the edges, white if you looked directly, and right now, orange-burning down the horizon, loomed above her eternally while the planet rotated. Indecisively, she waffled between the glass wall separating her from two hundred stories of oblivion below, and the elevator doors behind her, solemn and unmoving. As someone who had researched the topic (she researched everything she wrote about, and when you write 14 bestselling high concept horror/mystery/fantasy/sci-fi novels in your adult life, and elevators inevitably came up once or twice) she knew, intuitively, that nobody had ever gotten caught between those metal frames - at least, not without some serious finagling. But still, the mind wandered in this 5 minute climb to the peak of the sky. Had anyone ever been crushed by elevator doors? Mental note, Rose, look into that later.

Why was Rose, a mere author, at the municipal spire during one of the most exciting events in her lifetime - first contact with an extraterrestrial race? Why indeed! Perhaps you would find out soon, just as she would.

Just kidding. She knew exactly why she was there.

Her mind raced with possibilities, not for her presence (to act as a cross-species diplomat, that was the easy answer), but for what it meant. For her, as inspiration for her works, for the course of her life. She knew a couple of facts about this species, she had seen news reports but deliberately hid herself away from pictures when she received her invitation to become a diplomat. To an outsider, they sounded fairly demonic, which is why it presented no surprise that the remaining dregs of Evangelical Christianity that had not adapted to the interstellar age were caught in an uproar about the whole scenario, but to Rose? An endless hall of fascination. Grey skin, fire-colored horns, yellow eyes. The basic body plan of a humanoid (what an incredibly strange coincidence), but any other xenobiological details she kept herself in the dark about.

Didn't want to spoil the surprise, after all. She had, of course, received a dossier and read precisely none of it. When the elevator doors slid open, that was when she allowed herself the sight for the first time.

Alternians. What an odd choice of name.

Rose lowered her head both in a measure of respect and to keep the fun going as she walked down the hallway now revealed to her, past scores of government neckties hustling and bustling about. Down and to the right and then to the left and then you'll pass a door, and it's not that one but the next one, on the left, turn down the hallway, and forward. She must've looked awfully funny, a short, dumpy little forty-something author in her best ribbed sweater shuffling past a bunch of government goons in monkey suits with her head down, but she reaped (reapt? No.) the last laugh when the sliding doors hissed open just for her, dumping her into a large, rectangular meeting room, and she got to look up at First Contact with fresh eyes.

A large, rectangled-ovular room, not entirely unlike that at a board meeting (which Rose had witnessed, but never been in, formally. By definition, she was self-employed, only with publishers as a passing dalliance), containing several other diplomats chosen from many walks of life. Four humans (no, "Terrans" was the "correct" term, she supposed), four Alternians. Even stevens. Rose quietly wandered in, and took a seat at the closest end of the table, in the closest seat to her, looking to the furthest of the Alternians. Then, the next, the next, the next, back and forth her purple eyes flicking like spheres of steel on a Newton's cradle, click click click.

There was an odd lack of color coordination among them, with Rose's eyes first drawn to their outfits. All in various shades of black, fuchsia, and then some other tertiary color, low in saturation. Furthest away from Rose was a raucous looking lady in dark teal, the shortest of the four visible, with a short cropped cut on her rough, spiky hair, two perfectly conical horns jutting out of the top of her head. Her face had an almost giddy looking grin on it, some sort of black bodysuit underlying her more elaborate robes over top. In fact, all of them, Rose noticed, had the same general outfit plan, with a plain black bodysuit beneath, and a fancier covering over top. Rose remained silent as the human side of the delegation began to filter in. Evidently, she had been the first to arrive.

Oh, these were people she vaguely recognized, in a hazy, half-remembered way. Yes, it was public information that Rose had been picked to become one of humanity's first major diplomats for an alien species, and yes, her celebrity status had somewhat skyrocketed in response, but as a weird reclusive author, she had managed to avoid the worst of the attention barring having to shoot at paparazzi a couple of times. Like her earlier internal narration had mentioned, she had been staying away from the news. Avoiding spoilers. Dave Strider, a movie director Rose had worked with once in the past, on a script (she went uncredited). She passed him a little nod, and he noticed her, and walked past, which was the closest you would get to a greeting from him. How did she know he noticed? Well, a woman has to has her secrets, doesn't she?

Rose's eyes were momentarily pulled to the male(? she was unsure of how Alternian gender worked, exactly) Alternian situated in the center of their side of the table, noticing that his robes, cut a little more close to the wire than everyone else's, were decorated in grey. For a moment, she wondered why, and was then summarily distracted by the door opening once again. John Egbert, now that was a face she hadn't seen in some time, not since his career skyrocketed after a successful Netflix showing (back when Netflix existed). It was good to see him - Rose even gave him an uncharacteristic-of-her polite little wave, and he grinned that great buck-toothed grin she was so used to seeing. Then, following shortly behind, the last of the human diplomats - someone who Rose did not recognize in the slightest. Long brown hair, big round glasses, tan skin, labcoat... Definitely Rose's type. Maybe after this whole delegation experiment was over. The humans all took their seats, and Rose continued taking stock of the Alternians while the clock ticked by.

The other two left unexamined had much, much fancier horns than the grey and the teal one. A deep, rich shade of cerulean was met with a spiky, unmanaged mane of hair, a visible prosthetic eye and arm, and a dizzying array of facial scarring, along with horns that resembled nothing more than a set of powerful hooks. Part of Rose wondered, deeply, what exactly were they used for? Mating displays? Combat? Reproduction? Hopefully, she would find out.

One of the Alternians began speaking, the grey one, with a voice that was dizzying, almost nauseating. His pointed ears twitched slightly as he talked, the very distinct sensation of two separate tones emerging from a single throat, intermingling. When everyone on Rose's side of the table, her included, looked at him in a very odd, confused fashion, he let out a sigh, pulling out what looked to be his equivalent of their little dossiers, and tapped it impatiently. "He's saying that we need to get our translators out and introduce ourselves." The other human girl in the room said, clipping a little fold-out earpiece onto her ear. When did that get there?

Hmm. Maybe she needed to read her dossiers more. She pulled open the folder, very clearly prying the glue free for the first time, and reached in to find a small, credit card-like device that unfurled and folded up at the squeeze of her thumb and index finger, almost like origami. Within seconds, it had become an earpiece, ready to clip onto Rose's ear and point towards her mouth, and so she did. For a moment, she heard a whining, dizzy-sounding noise in her ear canal, but the moment quickly passed. Rose noted to herself, with no small amount of amusement, that their guests were similarly distressed by their distinctly biological-looking translator equivalents being clipped into _their_ ears. Fair's fair.

"Great. Can you hear us now?" The grey Alternian asked, the wobbly tones of his two-throated(?) voice catching on the thing in Rose's ear and somehow transmitting themselves into a distinctly more human sounding noise. Even computer generated, it somehow carried this man's sore, yell-tired, weary voice in plain English. Maybe some day Rose would go and bully a scientist with unfulfilled promises of banging a hot novelist until he told her how it worked. Or she could just ask, that would probably also work.

"Loud and clear." Rose said, cutting off John as he was about to speak. "Is there any sort of recognized procedure here, or is this first contact scenario going to be the interstellar diplomacy equivalent of Hungry Hungry Hippo?"

Dave visibly tried not to laugh in his seat next to Rose, biting on the back of his index finger.

The grey Alternian tried not to look exasperated. "Kanaya, what is a "Hippo"?" He asked. "I need to know if this strange sort of figurative language is the human's way of flirting or if it's their way of suggesting we all immediately attempt to kill each other?"

That got Rose's attention on the last Alternian, hitherto gone unexamined. She was... _very_ clearly the tallest, looming over the table, almost certainly a good seven and a half feet without taking into account the elaborate horns. Her robe, the flowiest and elaboratest of them all, was dressed in dull, lovely jade green. An excellent choice, Rose thought to herself. She skimmed through some sort of PDA sort of thing (great prose, Rose) for the requisite information, and then spoke, the translator picking up her words into a pleasant, tea-like tone, unable to be placed accurately to any human locale but somehow reminding Rose of the accents of posh Londoners nonetheless. "A hippopotamus, or "hippo", is an extinct Terran organism of the class Mammalia, similarly to Terrans. Mammals are characterized by the presence of "mammary glands" for feeding young, "fur", a developed "neocortex" - a region of the Terran think pan -, and three endoskeletal bones within the inner ear. Hippopotami are members of the "even-toed ungulate--"

"Yeah, yeah, grubpan, skip to the important part. Is this solicitation pitch or flush?" The teal Alternian snapped, her voice stringy, reedy, warped, like snapping violin strings. Her countenance reminded Rose very distinctly of a goblin of some kind - and, for some reason, Rose felt intuitively that this comparison, should she find out what a "goblin" is, would please her.

"Hippopotami are notorious for being one of the deadliest land-based herbivorous Terran organisms, meaning they subsist solely on plant matter." Kanaya recited.

"So, it's pitch, then." The teal Alternian concluded, satisfied.

"...But in this case, "Hungry Hungry Hippos" is referring to a children's game manufactured by the now extinct "Hasbro" corporate entity. It is known for being excessively chaotic, and apparently based more on luck than skill or timing." Kanaya concluded, putting the small pad away into her lap. Her face had an intriguing, narrow sort of allure to it, combined with the ruffled, fuzz-covered cloak she wore giving her an appearance of some kind of otherworldly moth-thing.

"Gweh." The teal Alternian groaned, scratching her head.

"Empress, please, you are all obnoxious." The cerulean Alternian whined. "Here, let's make this easy before any of us make any more of an ass of ourselves. Let's start with Kanaya, because everyone knows your name now, and go around the table, introducing ourselves. Simple, right? No way anyone could fuck that up."

John and the teal Alternian both began cracking up simultaneously, only stopping once they realized the other had been laughing. Immediately, they shot daggers at each other, if just for a moment, before Kanaya gave a little "heh-hem" to get the table's attention. "Kanaya Maryam, High Auxiliatrix, 3rd Degree. It's a pleasure to meet you all."

She passed the buck sideways to the grey Alternian, who sighed very quietly and slightly. "Karkat Vantas, Praetorian Guard, 1st Order." It was clear that trying to be polite, unlike Kanaya, was putting a strain on his mental resources. A man ready to burst at the slightest provocation.

"Vriska Serket. I don't work a Fleet job, unlike the rest of my colleagues." The Alternian in cerulean crooned, looking very smugly satisfied by that fact. She gesticulated her mechanical limb theatrically for a moment, before letting it come down to rest at her side.

Finally, the goblin - Rose's favorite, honestly. "Terezi Pyrope, Legislacerator, 4th Degree." Like Karkat, she seemed to be visibly restraining the urge to talk more, a veritable explosion of activity contained in a tight, compressed little sphere of Alternian, like a nuclear bomb.

"Jade Harley. I'm a nuclear physicist, I work for the government." The other human girl, who Rose still did not recognize, said. Rose wasn't going to crane her head to look, but she could hear the smile in Jade's voice.

"Hi! I'm John. John Egbert. I'm a comedian. And an actor, I guess? Both of those, yeah." John said, maintaining his typical levels of enthusiasm - it was heartening to see that none of that had really changed over the years.

Dave adjusted his sunglasses as dramatically as possible with as small a motion as possible. "My name is David Elizabeth Strider. I--"

"Cut the bullshit, that's not your actual middle name." Karkat interrupted, tapping on a stack of papers with two fingers. "I swear to the Empress I'm the only person here that read the papers."

Rose watched Dave roll his eyes behind his sunglasses and remained as stoic as possible. "Dave Strider. I create... cinema." As if to illustrate the point, he turned both of his index fingers and thumbs into a rectangle, framing it around Karkat's face, before making a little camera snapping "Nk-nkt" with his tongue.

"My name is Rose Lalonde. I write moderately popular novels." Rose introduced herself, and Kanaya immediately shot up, her back straightening.

"Rose Lalonde?" She asked, as if to make sure.

"Yes, that is the name that I did just introduce myself as. Is there a problem, Mrs. Maryam?" Rose asked.

Kanaya smiled and laughed, gently fanning herself with one hand. "No, I just - they assigned us some Terran cultural materials on the trip here, I enjoyed... Your books. The most. Of the materials, I mean."

Vriska rolled her eyes, much more visibly than Dave did a minute ago. "Fangirl later, Kanaya. You're going to embarrass us." She stage-whispered, not seeming to care that everyone could hear her loud and clear. Kanaya shot Vriska a venomous look, and then settled back down into her composure.

"Right. Well, it's a pleasure to meet everyone. Now, if I--"

"Wait, did they give us Alternian cultural materials?" Rose interjected. "That feels somewhat unfair if it's only one-sided."

Jade coughed twice into her hand. "Yes, in the dossier, there was a USB-4 card with, uh, the appropriate stuff."

"Finally! Someone else reads the fucking-- The--... The dossier!" Karkat yelled, unable to restrain whatever translated into English as a "fuck" from leaving his throat(s?), only to quickly overcorrect.

Rose wilted, very slightly. "Right. Apologies."

"What a motley assortment this is!" Terezi cackled, gently tugging at her own hair at the back of her head, leaning back in her chair.

"You could even call it a motley crew, if you were so inclined!" John piped up, making Terezi laugh even harder.

"Yes! That is a reference to one of your Terran bands! I appreciated the noises of that one in particular!" Terezi shrieked, making Karkat clasp one hand over his ears in aggravation.

"Seems we're off to a great start." Rose muttered under her breath. "What's the next step in this diplomacy plan, now that I imagine all preconceived steps have fallen out the window?"

Kanaya reaches for her PDA and taps it several times, before clearing her chest and reading off of it. "Actually, it appears both of our respective governments wanted essentially this to happen. To "establish good cheer, relations, and rapport between species through mutual appreciation of culture, arts, and attitude"."

Dave scoffed lightly, only to make a noncommittal little grunt when Rose elbowed him in the side. "So, they just wanted to bring us over to a table and proceed to make a mess of things to prove that, yes, humans and extraterrestrials can, in fact, have stupid arguments with each other too?"

Kanaya nodded politely. "Yes, exactly that, Mr. Strider."

"Hmm." He hummed.

"Then, afterwards, we are to pair up for a period of at least twelve Terran months, or approximately six thirteenths of a solar sweep, and engage in cooperative cohabitation with our chosen delegate of the opposite species. If there are irreconcilable differences between individuals that would lead to hostile activities, you are to consult your diplomatic officer as soon as possible." Kanaya continued, reading off her PDA, using one finger to guide her eyes. Dave coughed and sputtered a bit, while Rose just stared straight ahead.

"Huh?" John asked, innocently enough.

"I mean, this _was_ all in the dossier, if you had read it." Jade chimed in, helpfully. "Time to draw straws, kiddos."


	2. Chapter 2

It was very simple, really. Jade literally brought straws. Every human drew, they marked down numbers, shortest was 1, longest was 4. Then, the Alternians, shortest was 1, longest was 4. Then, pair-off. Really, a very simple, elegant system, although there was probably an easier way to do so.

(Rose had asked Jade why they needed to do that when they could've just used a random number generator, or somesuch. Jade said that it involved "cultural values" or something, and Rose scoffed and walked her by)

Rose Lalonde, #3, and Kanaya Maryam, #3. Rose was given a week to uproot her life by the seams, just like the rest of them, to prepare for her year with an Alternian. Thankfully, Rose didn't consider herself the keeper of much worth uprooting. Despite her financial success, Rose Lalonde lived a spartan existence, in a lonesome manor that used to be owned by her now dead mother. She never renovated it, nor did she bother hiring maids to clean the dust off long-empty memories and quiet barstools. No, this place would languish, a deceased house, a silent house, laid to rest years ago, buried along with her mother.

Still, it had all her stuff. And some alcohol, which Rose loathed to touch but might be a good icebreaker with the moderately attractive alien woman. To be honest, Kanaya wasn't Rose's first choice - that would be Terezi, the scrappy little firebrand with a loud voice like knives chopping salmon and all the viciousness of a piranha to match, a dangerous seeming woman that Rose had no doubt could flay her from top to bottom, pulling off her skin like removing a winter coat. She didn't know why that specific image occurred to her, nor why so frequently, but it did, and it did with Terezi. Kanaya seemed... too safe. Too matronly, almost, in a way that reminded her uncomfortably of her mother.

Hopefully that wouldn't put a damper to any sort of sexual situation that Rose would inevitably attempt to ply. Rose hated it whenever an opportunity arose to prove Freud right, the hack.

Honestly, Rose didn't need the week. She packed up enough clothes, four week's worth (wash every two, remember that, Rose, you don't want to be smelly around your Alternian. But maybe they like human scent? Information to acquire at a later date - note that down). A couple of fancy occasion clothes, since she didn't doubt there would be times where they would be rather forcefully thrust into public limelight against the twosome's will. Especially if Rose ended up courting the pour woman, that would certainly be a mess of rather epic proportions. Medications, all of them, including the ones she technically didn't need anymore.

Best part about being a celebrity? The only good part, really? All the free Ritalin. She stuffed it into her purse by the pillbottle. Zoloft, Xanax, and Ritalin - what a combo. Can't forget some Nyquil and Benedryl, if you wanted to pass out in a drug-induced haze, and some Melatonin, if you wanted to pass out in a more normal fashion.

Laptop. Can't forget that.

Toiletries. Can't forget those.

Did she need anything else? Not really. She stuffed an old, musty wine bottle into her purse just in case Kanaya ended up liking it. No, Kanaya wasn't her first choice (Dave ended up getting Terezi, increasing Rose's envy, as if these were game characters being selected for a fight), but she still wanted to make a decent first impression. Lest you read her internal narrative and come to the conclusion that this Rose Lalonde is an unstable derelict of a woman with nothing to look out for besides herself, she was actually... a very unstable derelict of a woman, but still one married to her job. Usually, that was an author. Now, it was an author and a diplomat.

And then, she slept on the couch for the rest of the week.

Friday, the car came for her. In the intervening time, she didn't doubt for a second that some enterprising paparazzi had tracked her down to her relatively secluded manor, maybe snuck a few pictures through the oversized windows, but Rose hardly cared. She spent her days sleeping, in a slightly medicated bliss, just to make the time pass her by faster. Like fast travel in a video game, there was no use doing anything between now and then. Nothing, really, mattered in this intervening, liminal week. Time passed, and then it didn't, and there was a car outside with bulletproof windows.

Rose shuffled drowsily forward, carrying her luggage along with her, and her purse, oversized, hanging off her shoulder. She loaded it herself into the trunk of the car. Men with guns were there, and she paid them very little heed, slipping into the back seat and falling asleep before someone could really bother her. They knew where to drive, after all.

* * *

It was a nice place. A nice little apartment in the municipal spire, close to the top, where you needed to have special clearance to assert yourself, to show up even. Rose did not have this clearance. Kanaya did not have this clearance. Rose and Kanaya's many bodyguards did, in fact, have this clearance, and so, demurely, Rose had to ask to have the door opened in front of her, repeatedly.

It was... an apartment. Two bedroom, very pleasant, with a nice little kitchen and a nice little bathroom (and a shower just big enough for two, even the towering Kanaya, if she squeezed a little bit). The curtains were blue, along with most of the other decor, dark navy blues and bright, federal whites. Rose got there before Kanaya did, taking out her personal effects, setting them on the nightstand in her bedroom, the one that opened to the little ID card she was given. One of the bodyguards told her that there were metal, ceramic plates in the walls, between each room, and inside the doors, in case some kind of fight broke out.

Rose was not a strong woman. She knew a little bit of jiu-jitsu from a self-defense class. She didn't own a gun, but she did have car keys. She hoped they wouldn't fight. She set herself up in her two-person bed and wondered why there were two bedrooms but a two-person sized bed, unless they were being very nice to her, and giving her plenty of room to snore and stretch. Rose shuffled around the apartment in a slight daze, occasionally peeking out the windows (more thick, laminated, bulletproof glass, dark from the outside, visible from the inside like a two-way mirror imprisoning them in their navy-blue-and-white world). There was a small menu slipped underneath the front door, she scanned it while waiting for Kanaya. Three options for meals, per meal, three meals a day, and a snack (non-negotiable). Human food on one side, and dangerously unfamiliar looking Alternian food on the other.

It was so intriguing, the scribbly, scrawly script, the dots and markings, it distinctly reminded her of late afternoons at Hebrew school, learning her Torah portions for her Bat Mitzvah, before she mostly forsook religion. Forsaken? Forsook? Who knows. She didn't want to get her phone out to check. Maybe if their chirality, or something of the sort, is compatible, Kanaya will let her nibble on that delightful looking hunk of indeterminate alien beast, and she might teach the troll woman the delight of the puzzling delicacy known as Dino Chicken Nuggets. Are they dinosaur, or are they chicken? Aha, but therein lies the trick - a trace of the true self exists within the false self. Rose chuckled to herself quietly, as a loud quick, lurid whine, languid hiss announced the door's mechanism unlocking, belying one Kanaya Maryam.

She was still as tall and willowy as she was before, now, much more obviously towering a good foot, maybe even a foot and a half, over the relatively diminutive Rose. Actually, not even relatively - Rose was just small. Kanaya looked down at Rose, and Rose looked up at her, and they both blinked at each other, for a moment, and Rose wondered if they had anything like cats on Alternia, anything where a slow blink meant comfort. "Hungry?" She asked.

"Famished, actually." Kanaya's sing-song voice rung through her translator.

"Great. I think food's free." Rose sort of threw out there, slowly wobbling over to the kitchen table, pulling a chair out for Kanaya humbly, and then squeezing herself much more uncomfortably into its matching chair. "They gave us a menu and everything. Mind translating?"

"Not at all, it would be my pleasure." Kanaya answered, sitting down in the offered seat with a small, almost regal chuckle, scooting herself in with tiny little scooting motions. She gently pried the menu out of Rose's hand, flipping it over with that awful wobbling noise that laminated paper often made when you wobbled it, and began to read.


	3. Chapter 3

"So, Kanaya, is it?" Rose asked quietly, looking over the human side of the menu with a sense of soft little awe. Of course, being a bit of a minor celebrity meant that Rose had access to all manner of creature comforts should she desire them, but still, infinite room service with an alien that wasn't exactly bad looking was a pretty good perk - above and beyond the typical one allotted to celebrities of her ken. Stephen King, you old codger, eat your heart out. It was a late afternoon, which typically meant lunch for late-sleeper Rose, the sort of person who ate breakfast at 2 PM, lunch at 8 PM, and dinner at 5 AM, before passing right out to do it all over again. "How are you enjoying your stay on our lovely little home planet thus far?"

"It's quite nice." Kanaya murmured, idly reading her menu, occasionally flicking back and forth, trying to build recognition in her eyes. The Alternian food, to her, must've looked dangerously familiar, and the human food, mere facsimile, something foreign, an unnatural thing placed in laminate for the consumption of her eyes. "I like being able to feel the sun, that's a very pleasant thing. You Terrans have it pretty well by that regard."

"Oh, is your planet tidally locked or somesuch?" Rose asked, her eyes repeatedly skimming over the human food while steadfastly refusing to take any of the information into her brain. She saw pictures, she saw words, and some magic happened somewhere in her nerves and neurons but she wasn't receiving any of it. A world without sunlight? Sounds like a lonely place, albeit perhaps one festooned with vampires. What? Weirder things, evidently, have happened.

"No, actually - our days are quite frequent and regular. Probably as much as yours, even, but our sun is bright and red and angry. It scorches all but the hardiest and blinds upon viewing. We like to get most of our work done during the evening." Kanaya answered, looking towards the bulletproof windows with a sense of wistful longing at the stretching fingers of dim sunlight, scraping against her arms.

"Oh, what a coincidence - that's about when I like to get my work done as well." Rose replied, glancing towards the window that Kanaya was longingly staring out towards. "Your species is a nocturnal one, then?"

"Yes." Kanaya answered, giggling quietly behind her fingers. "Not me, however. I prefer to stay up with the sunlight. I suppose that would be diurnal, then, rather than nocturnal?"

"You could say it that way, I suppose." Rose answered. "Either way, the two of us tend to be awake when the rest of the world isn't, I take it?"

Kanaya chuckled again, putting both hands back on her menu. "Yes, you could certainly phrase it that way, if one had certain inclinations. I'll have to get adjusted to a world full of people for which waking in the morning is the norm."

"You could always stay up late with me, and we could sync up schedules. Me, as the abnormal night owl staying up late with the rising moon, you, the well-adjusted Alternian who sleeps and wakes up at typical hours for your species. Or we could average both out and just say we wake up in the afternoon and go to sleep in the very late evening, that could also work?" Rose sort of half-joked, half-explained, half-asked.

"Or you could just join my schedule and the rest of your kind." Kanaya laughed.

"Not bloody likely." Rose responded, lowering her eyebrows and actually diving back into reading the menu. Theoretically, she would be able to order from any of the selections at any time of day, but she'd play their little games and order the meals in the proper order - for now. "Shall we start with the Alternian side of the menu, or the Terran one?" Rose asked, still not quite used to referring to herself as a "Terran" rather than a "human".

"Tell me about Terran cuisine, Rose Lalonde." Kanaya answered, grinning, two sharp, dangerous looking fangs prodding out and just barely over her bottom lip. Rose tried not to stare, tearing her eyes away enough that she could look back down at the window.

She coughed a couple of times to clear her throat. "For dinner, they've given us three delightfully Italian options, all of which come with a side of what I imagine will be a rather mediocre "spaghetti with garlic and brown butter"."

"That sounds increasingly foreign already." Kanaya interrupted, drawing a little coughing, sputtering laugh out of Rose.

"Oh, we'll get to that. I could either receive "Chicken Parmesan", which is a small cutlet of fowl pounded flat, breaded, fried, coated in acidic sauce, and then a layer of melted cheese, "Lasagna", which is a layering of flat noodles, cheese, bechamel and bolognese sauces - truly, carbohydrate loading -, or... " _Rabbit_ Cacciatore", well, that's not a meat I expected to see on a fancy menu but I do suppose, consisting of a meat, in this case, rabbit, braised in tomato, onion, and various other herbs, sometimes bell peppers. Or... at least, that's how I remember it." Rose read off each dish title from the table, politely, smilingly, combining the very sparse descriptions with her own memory of what a dish contained.

Kanaya looked at her, blinking a couple of times, and laughed. "Rose Lalonde, I haven't the slightest what any of those things are except "carbohydrates" and "braising". One is an essential nutrient, and the other, a method of cooking meat in liquid, correct?"

Rose blinked right back, eyes widening, then narrowing, and then widening again, before settling on just slightly wider than normal. She leaned back on her chair, steadying herself by using her feet to catch on the table. "They truly do wish for this to be a cultural exchange, then. Shall we go down the list?"

"Please." Kanaya said, grinning.

"So, let's start from the basics. About, I don't know, eighty percent of what humans eat is some form of grain product - that's a, if I recall my grade level biology correctly, a kind of starchy plant - starchy in this case meaning that it's full of carbohydrates, in addition to--" Rose began, before she was quickly interrupted by a cackling Kanaya.

"Rose Lalonde, I know what "starchy" means. Let's assume I know the barest basics. I know that "meat" is what you refer to as the flesh and muscular tissue of an animal that you are preparing for consumption." Kanaya interceded, grinning with those sharp, sharp teeth.

"And fat. The fat is the good part." Rose filled in.

Kanaya leaned forward, hungry for more information. "The fat, really? Why's that?"

"It's the part that tastes good when you cook it." Rose explained, very thusly.

Kanaya raised an eyebrow. "Is taste... important for Terrans in their cooking?"

Rose couldn't really hide the stunned expression on her face, taking solace in the fact that at least Kanaya found it funny. "I'll assume by you asking, that that means it's _not_ very important for Alternians. Would that be a correct assumption?"

Kanaya nodded politely. "Nutritional value, texture, appearance, and sound are all the most important aspects of a meal, in roughly that order."

"Your meals make _sound_?" Rose squawked in disbelief.

"Yours do not?" Kanaya responded, equally shocked.

Rose couldn't help it, trying and failing to bite back amused cackles. "No, not frequently. Shall we continue the little ingredient expose?"

Kanaya lurched forward, shuffling her chair in further so she could listen to Rose more easily. "Please do."

"Right, well, I imagine Alternia has plant life, yes?" Rose asked, receiving a nod in return. "Culinarily speaking, humans divide our plant-life into three broad categories that are not particularly scientifically rigorous - grain, vegetable, and fruit. Grains are, broadly speaking, starchy plants that grow above the ground. The distinction between fruits and vegetables always seemed somewhat arbitrary to me, but, again, broadly speaking, vegetables tend to be more of a plant's flesh and leaves and roots, and are typically utilized for savory purposes, while fruits are usually the berries and other such reproductive elements of a plant. I'm not a chef or a botanist, so, take my explanation with a grain of salt."

Kanaya blinked a couple more times at Rose. "Grain of salt, like, in the culinary sense?"

Rose shook her head, chuckling. "No, that's a Terran saying. Like... Don't read too much into it, don't trust me too much on the matter because I'm not educated and could be making shit up based on half-remembered books and classes. Don't get too close to the statement. Take it with a grain of salt."

"Oh, very well! I suppose you could call "Don't chug sopor on it" a roughly analogous turn of phrase." Kanaya answered, with a playful little flourish of the hand.

"Sopor? As in a soporific?" Rose asked.

"The very same. Oh, if sopor slime is unfamiliar to you, then we do indeed have much catching up and exchanging of cultures to do..." Kanaya answer-mumbled, just loud enough so that she was sure Rose heard her. She waved the thought away with a chuckle. "Later, later. I'm interested in the Terran foodstuffs."

"Right." Rose continued, thumping her chest twice again. "So, tomatoes are a berry, botanically speaking, but they're savory and acidic and so in cooking they're essentially treated as a vegetable. They're also ubiquitous in Italian cooking - that's a, uh, Italians are... a subdivision of Terrans? From the region of Italy. It's in the Mediterranean, we can go over geography later. Anyway, Tomato is the primary ingredient in the sauces for all three dishes - bolognese is a kind of tomato-and-meat sauce consisting of stewed tomato and ground up meat. Oh, right, grain. Most starchy grains can be milled into powder of some kind and then, when liquid like water or an egg is added, turned into dough."

Kanaya's face lit up softly. "We have dough! Usually made from starchy cellulose, though. But we do have dough!"

"Great." Rose replied, squeezing her face up a little bit. "Glad to see that one crossed cultural barriers. Spaghetti, lasagana noodles, "breading", these are all applications of dough. Breading in particular I think you might appreciate, since it serves little purpose other than to make a meat crispier."

"You would be correct, I am interested immensely." Kanaya answered. "Carry on."

"Right, what else - chicken is a kind of bird we raise on Earth, to harvest its eggs and meat. Rabbit is also a kind of animal, but they are very small mammals, and not something people from where I live typically eat." Rose continued with her fun little exposition dump, having a distinctly strange amount of fun explaining the bare basics of what human food was to an alien.

"Do you also harvest rabbit eggs?" Kanaya asked innocently.

Rose let out another witchy cackle. "No, rabbits don't lay eggs, usually. Most mammals here don't. That being said, most mammals do produce milk--" Rose watched Kanaya for a response, relaxing slightly when she nodded knowingly at the mention of "milk", hoping that there was at least some sort of cultural similar-product that could be used there. "--And we use milk to produce a large quantity of goods. We chemically treat it to create "cheese", which is perhaps the greatest thing G-d has ever given us, and we also turn it into cream and butter, the foundational elements of the aforementioned bechamel sauce and brown butter spaghetti. Uh, um... Garlic, onion, bell pepper are all fragrant, flavorful plants, usually not added to a dish for nutritional value."

Kanaya nodded knowingly, absorbing the knowledge, chewing on it for several silent minutes. Rose felt kind of weird continuing to stare at her, eventually tilting her head over so she could look at the window instead, until Kanaya's voice startled her out of her reverie. "Excellent! Thank you very much for informing me so much, Rose Lalonde. Obviously, I could've researched all these things thoroughly on my own time, but I believe it forms good rapport with my fellow delegate to have these sorts of amusing conversations face to face, don't you think?"

"Indubitably." Rose dryly replied.

"Shall I finally go over our end of the table, then, Rose Lalonde?" Kanaya asked, putting down the Alternian side of the menu on the table and lightly thumping it with the back of her hand.

"Please, I've been _dying_ to know." Rose responded, with as much sincerity as could be mustered in her burnt out mid-40s body.


	4. Chapter 4

"So, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that I am not sure there is much of a way I can describe to you the various ingredients of our foodstuffs as lavishly as you have with ours." Kanaya said, sighing wistfully and staring outwards towards the bulletproof windows for a moment before turning her attention back towards the laminated menus. "How to cook food is not a skill possessed by most of our kind - we have automated processes to take care of most of the busywork, and for those without, typically individuals will take on the sole responsibility of cooking for many. I'm afraid to say I know very little about the intricacies of Alternian cuisine, although I could certainly tell you about sewing, or..." She thought for a moment, and then blushed and cut her sentence off.

"That's a shame, I was looking forward to you telling me about all the various Alternian flora and fauna that you gut and divide into neat segments before apportioning off, cooking in various ways, and then serving to an adoring audience." Rose chirped, resting one elbow on the table and propping her chin up in her palm, staring towards Kanaya with an equal amount of wistfulness as she did to the window a minute earlier. "Or something equally fanciful to that, in any regard."

Kanaya chuckled quietly. "Most of our meat is harvested from a single animal we call a meatgrub that we've helped grow over the sweep-hundreds and sweep-thousands into the perfect meal-providing animals."

"Hold on, I'm just making sure my translator is working correctly - meat grub, like the larval stage of an insectoid organism? And what, pray tell, is a sweep? I imagine it's some sort of measure of time?" Rose asked, looking at Kanaya with a raised eyebrow and thoroughly piqued curiosity. A small part of her, the unimaginative part she tried to kill in college with overdoses of LSD and mushrooms, had considered that perhaps they just grew cows and chickens like her kind did, but perhaps with a second head, or blue fur. Something akin to the alien-yet-familiar way the Alternians looked, like grey humans with odd horns and some more features that fell apart when you looked longer and longer, going from recognizable to strange.

For example, most human skin reflected light in a particular fashion... as did any object, to be clear, but there was something particularly odd about the reflections of Kanaya's skin, the way she seemed to shimmer and shine in the light, her silhouette not seeming to quite match the way the light from the room scattered about her. For a few odd moments, Rose considered that Kanaya might've been a vampire of some kind, but then, her more grounded nature kicked in, and considered that different materials reflected light in much different ways than normal. Perhaps the Alternians had, inside their skin, some kind of biological retroreflector, a means of ensuring visibility in low light conditions? A question for a later date, perhaps with a consensually obtained sample of some of Kanaya's skin cells, anyway pay attention Rose! Stop mentally tangenting! Kanaya! Pay attention! She's talking!

"Are you okay, Rose Lalonde? You appear to have gone blank for a couple of moments, should I repeat myself?" Kanaya asked, confirming Rose's worst fears that her own dizzying train rides of internal narration down the winding roads her brain led her through were not only tangible in the outside world, but they were visible. Rose was mortified, and then remembered that she had this revelation about once a week, and stopped caring, and then remembered that she was doing it in front of the delegate she was supposed to be making a good impression in front of for the entire human race, and started caring again, breaking out into a cold sweat.

"Yes, please." Rose mumbled.

"A solar sweep is the Alternian measure of time - a single solar sweep indicates that our home planet has rotated once around her sun. Twelve human months are equivalent to approximately six thirteenths of a solar sweep, if I recall correctly." Kanaya explained, very calm, even, matter-of-factly to the rapt Rose, who was trying very hard not to have flights of fancy with her little runaway thought process problem she found herself repeatedly stumbling ass-into. This was, as you can imagine, a very difficult problem for Rose Lalonde in particular, mind ever-racing. Wait, didn't Kanaya mention that before?

"Didn't you mention that some time before? I seem to recall..." Rose chimed in, not really interrupting Kanaya so much as she continued the conversation in the only way that felt appropriate. This meant, of course, ejecting the first thought to queue itself up in the cannon that was her neurolinguistic circuits, the parts of her squishy meat brain that connected her head to her mouth.

Kanaya smiled in a way that felt both comforting and slightly patronizing at the same time. From anyone else it would make Rose want to threaten them, but somehow, on Kanaya, it felt comforting. "That's right, it was in the dossier."

"Oh, fuck the dossier." Rose exclaimed, picking up her menu with her free hand so she could dramatically toss it against the table. Then, since her other hand was falling asleep a little bit, she switched hands over, enough to cradle her chin in her other palm now. That was drastically more comfortable. "Where's everyone's sense of excitement, and passion, and wonder? I want to find everything out about you all firsthand. I don't want it dictated to me by a dry, droll government packet."

Kanaya laughed, easily amused by Rose's little faux-outraged outburst. "Well, we'll have plenty of time to find that out then about each other, I suppose. As for your second question, a meatgrub is a very large creature that is full of meat. It has very small, stubbly legs and a mixture of muscle types that have been artificially coaxed out of the creature in order to provide a large variety of cuts with every meatgrub. They also produce milk, which we use to produce a large variety of nutritional and consumer goods."

"Oh, so they're a cow." Rose observed, and Kanaya laughed again, filling Rose's shriveled little heart with a small little measure of odd, pleasant joy.

"I'm certain if I knew what a cow was, I would understand the comparison." Kanaya replied wryly.

"Are meatgrubs taller than a person and in possession of black spots on white fur?" Rose asked.

"Sometimes, and sometimes, why do you ask?" Kanaya asked back, lifting an eyebrow up in response.

Rose stifled a chuckle on her knuckle for a moment before switching hands yet again. Always have to keep switching hands to stave off the endless march of "hands falling asleep" syndrome, the uncomfortable buzzing pinprick of nerves on fire inside her skin, the worst part about being alive as a human being when you took out all other, larger, more important sufferings. Hands falling asleep? That shit sucked. "No reason in particular, just curiosity. So, what do they make out of these meatgrubs?"

"Well, I am unsure whose species is manning the kitchens or automated production lines so I will have to assume the quality of my meal will be negligible. Pessimistic comment aside, what we have here are three different preparations of meatgrub, one of which has been cooked very slowly in bone broth until it has begun falling apart into small shreds, one of which has been sliced into small medallions and seared at high temperatures to produce an appealing crust through application of the Maillard reaction--" Kanaya began to ramble, at least until she was cut off by Rose.

"The what reaction? Say that again." Rose asked.

"Maillard reaction." Kanaya repeated.

"Named after French chemist Louis Camille Maillard?" Rose asked.

"No, named after bronzeblooded discoverer Ansime Rionpi. Why do you ask?" Kanaya repeated.

Rose shook her head quietly, chuckling to herself. "No reason in particular, just satisfying my curiosity about translator technology. Do continue, please."

Kanaya heh-hemmed softly, before immediately launching back into her breathless recitation of Alternian foodstuff details. Rose leaned in closer, putting both palms beneath her chin, absolutely fascinated by the way the light seemed to glint off Kanaya in some places and completely fail to glint in others, like the shadows across her skin were going slightly off. "--... and the third preparation is to be diced into very small pieces and chemically cooked using some kind of acidic fauna product in order to prevent the ingestion of non-sterilized material off of raw meat. With all of these, we have a small salad of leafy greens."

Rose smiled, trying to resist the urge to bat her eyelashes in Kanaya's general direction. "Absolutely fascinating. What sounds good to you from the Terran menu?"

"They all sound very strange. You pick." Kanaya responded, flat and matter-of-fact.

"Great, Chicken Parm it is. That's- That's short for "Parmesan", as in one of the potential types of cheeses applied to the fried chicken. As for me... I don't know, what do you recommend?" Rose asked, looking her menu over again, just to make sure the options hadn't changed when she wasn't looking in order to make a fool out of her in front of the slightly intimidating alien woman. To her great surprise and mild thankfulness, they had not, remaining just as she had looked at them minutes ago.

"I do not recommend the second of the three options. I personally prefer a meal that requires me to chew as little as possible." Kanaya said, and Rose was absolutely and completely unsure whether or not Kanaya was joking, but when a clarification did not seem forthcoming, she was forced to assume that Kanaya was being absolutely serious.

"Great. Let's hit up room service then and you can order me some of the... Let's go with the chemically cooked option, that sounds distressingly alien enough to serve as an intriguing first meal." Rose said, lifting her head off of her palms and getting up so she could grab the nearby room service phone.

"That sounds like an excellent plan to me." Kanaya replied, grinning.


	5. Chapter 5

Room service was prompt, albeit not quick. It was distressingly un-automatic despite Rose's utopian visions of living in a future with aliens - you would imagine there would be something a little less demeaning and anxiety-inducing than having to select an option on a laminated piece of paper and then having to call someone and ask them to get it for you. Yes, uhhh, may we please have the chicken parmesan for the alien and I'll have whatever the human word for "chemically cooked alien meat" is. Great. Glad we could have that all cleared up and squared away. While they waited, Rose walked over to the couch and thusly deposited herself on it, grabbing a remote control and turning on the television for glorious background noise - it was far, far too silent for her comfort otherwise.

The layout of the apartment was nothing spectacularly out of the ordinary, outside of the two bedrooms, the little table for dining at, the kitchen and bathroom. There was, close to the windows, a couch sizable enough to fit a couple of normal sized people sitting down normally, and perhaps one Kanaya draped over the arm of it dramatically with a Rose in her lap (huh? Where did that come from), and in front of it, a large television. Beneath it, several consoles and whatsits of a variety that Rose may have enjoyed back in her wilder, more carefree college days, but no longer had the time, energy, motivation, or lack of depression to play anymore. Instead, the television functioned as just that, a television, displaying moving images on screen to an audience of precisely two. 

And lest you think this was just an ordinary television, and Rose's slightly dissociative nightmare of being trapped in a government-mandated love apartment with a choice alien babe could be tempered by something close to baseline reality, Rose's internal narration will now fully dissuade you of that notion. Rose, and Kanaya by extension, were not allowed to watch the news, or any actual programming. No, whatever genius had set up their television (and genius in the sincere, non-pejorative, non-sarcastic sense) had decided that the only things Rose and Kanaya had access to were a dizzying array of movies and television shows from bare minimum 10 years ago, stretching back all the way to the 70s. Rose thought this was awfully silly - why would you acquaint the alien only with pop culture as it existed 10 years ago? But, then again, it wasn't her decision to make in that regard. Perhaps there _was_ a good reason, and Rose was just meant to sit back and enjoy the ride. 

"Do you care for cinema much, Kanaya?" Rose asked, lowering herself down against the arm of the couch with a surly little smile, removing her shoes so that her feet could be lazily kicked up upon the cushions. It was likely Kanaya wasn't aware of this fact, since Rose didn't like to let it be known, but Rose had learned from the best when it came to the valuable art of being passive-aggressive. And something about Kanaya made Rose yearn for that sensation, the scouring looks, the second glances, the knowing little ways that two people could drive each other absolutely batshit insane without saying a word. Oh, if Kanaya wanted to relax just as much as Rose did, then she'd have to… impose somewhat! Muahaha, what a devious plan. Rose wiggled her toes slightly, adjusting them in her socks. 

"No, not particularly. I'm aware that it exists and I will watch it with friends should the need arise, but it's not something I find myself seeking out on a regular basis. Why do you ask?" Kanaya replied, getting up from the small table they were previously resting at, meandering her way over to the "living room", and sitting down right next to Rose's feet with no issue whatsoever. Not even a twitch that indicated the slightest amount of understanding of the advanced, tenth level passive aggressive games that Rose was playing. No matter, there'd always be later opportunities for needling, no need to rely on just the one. 

"Well, firstly, curious that you have those to begin with, or something close enough that it translated. Secondly, unlike your species, I imagine, we have not yet mastered the arts of autonomous cooking, so it would probably take some time before our meal actually arrives from the government-managed kitchen up to the pleasant confines of our living chamber." Rose meandered about with words, taking twice as long as any reasonable human would at getting to the point, and with likely three times the words. Now you understand why she was such a successful author, at least in part. 

"And where, pray tell, are you going with this, Rose Lalonde?" Kanaya asked just before Rose had the opportunity to actually finish her thought. Rose liked that, although another part of her found it somewhat annoying, the both parts fighting for a moment before the one that decided it liked Kanaya winning out, painting a pleased smile on Rose's face. 

"I figure, we probably have at bare minimum twenty minutes, realistically forty minutes, to burn in the pyre of cultural exchange while we wait for our food to arrive. Why not relax like two Terrans do on a chill Saturday evening and enjoy some Earthling cinema?" Rose suggested, shaking the remote around gently in her hands. Kanaya reached out, politely and delicately, like Rose was a bug she was afraid of snatching, gesturing for the remote. When Rose relinquished it, instead of doing what Rose expected, and turning on the television so that Rose could recommend a movie or two, Kanaya immediately began poking and prodding with the remote with her long, sharp-looking fingernails. "What, you've never seen a television remote before, Kanaya?"

Kanaya looked at Rose like she had three heads, and then laughed politely. "Of course I have, I'm just startled by its form factor, that's all. Our remotes tend to be a little more mobile."

Rose raised an eyebrow. "Mobile as in… they move? Do they squirm like insects or crawl like mollusks?" She asked, pitching an absurd comparison and immediately trying not to do a double take at the answer she received. 

"Both, actually." Kanaya replied, smiling just a bit at Rose, tilting her head in a most amused fashion, like she thought Rose's question was cute, silly, and a little dumb. Rose felt condescended to, and it felt just fine, which was weird because normally the sensation of being condescended to would've driven her into a frothy rage. Perhaps she was hungry for dinner and around a pretty lady (a situation in which her senses have, historically, taken leave of her). She decided not to read into this internal feelings jam much more, and instead went back to paying attention to Kanaya's words. "They're far more animal-like than this one, which appears to be a completely immobile device made of plastic."

"Like… they're alive?" Rose asked, trying and failing to raise her eyebrow even higher. 

Kanaya rubbed her chin in thought. "Not quite. I believe that would require the presence of a psionic imprint of some kind to qualify as "alive" as you or I would say it. But, sure, at some point their ancestral devices probably were what we would consider "alive", perhaps."

Rose tried not to make too much of a face at the strange things Kanaya said, partially out of fear of offending an alien visitor, partly out of fear of offending Kanaya. "Are you saying that not only do you grow remote controllers for your televisions, but that you do this for many things, and that over the course of an indeterminate amount of time, you have bred what you consider to be the "indicator for life" out of them, rendering them as nothing more than, functionally, biological machines?" She asked, her voice growing increasingly breathless as she spoke her thoughts aloud, developing a sort of strange, desperate franticness to her despite the low stakes of their conversation. 

Kanaya thought for another moment, her fingers having continued to pick at the remote's various seams and buttons for the past four ish minutes. "Yes, I suppose that sounds accurate. Why, is that strange?"

Rose laughed. "Only a little bit. Are you satisfied with your examination?"

"Very. What shall we be watching tonight, Rose Lalonde?" Kanaya asked, gently chucking the remote underhand to Rose, who still barely managed to catch it despite it being tossed underhand from, like, three feet away. 

"How do you feel about horror movies?" Rose asked. 

"I have no strong feelings one way or the other." Kanaya replied. 

Rose grinned. "Great. I'm going to show you a classic, then. It'll be helpful in understanding Terran cultural context of the 80s." Rose responded, turning most of her body over onto her side so she could face the television, gesturing the remote towards it and surfing through the menus to the surf bar. 

"Oh, that sounds very lovely! What is it called?" Kanaya asked, relaxing back into the couch cushions and kicking her shoes up onto the coffee table. When she noticed Rose's head somewhat anxiously glowering in her direction, Kanaya retracted her feet, removed her boots from them, and then put them back up onto the coffee table before reclining into the couch. 

"It's based on a book, and it is called "American Psycho"." Rose answered, grinning wider. 


	6. Chapter 6

What was happening what was happening what was happening what was happening? Obviously, a movie was on the television display, that much wasn't really in question by anyone who mattered - neither Rose, nor Kanaya. Their cultural differences weren't such a vast gulf to make it unrecognizable that a movie was being displayed on the screen, the sultry demeanour of Christian Bale attempting to be a New York yuppie (and succeeding with flying, bloody colors) emblazoned in their eyes, but that wasn't the issue. At some point, Rose had given up on the ostentatious game of legs, on trying to crowd Kanaya out of the couch using her politeness against her, and instead, had ended up… _leaning_ on her. Gag her with a spoon, much?

It wasn't like it had happened very suddenly. They both just… continually adjusted into the middle, and then Rose's head was on Kanaya's shoulder, and Kanaya made no motion to dislodge her so Rose gathered that it was probably fine. Kanaya was cool to the touch in all the ways that a human wasn't, with her skin having a strange, sort of appealing roughness to it on the occasions in which her chin brushed up against Rose's head, or face, or something like that. It wasn't the kind of roughness that made your fingers catch on it - it was still smooth in the ways skin was meant to be, but it had a distinctly _wrong_ \- no - _different_ texture to Rose's skin. No pores or hair follicles to be found (which meant she-- head out of the gutter, Rose), light wrapping off her body in the strangest of ways, making her almost appear to glow. Rose's hands were folded politely into her own lap, not wanting to broach the aura of untouchability any further than a mere shoulder-lean would ensue.

And on screen, Patrick Bateman murdered a prostitute. Classy.

Kanaya wasn't one for idle small talk, it seemed, during movies, although normally Rose would be all about chatting her ear off with small anecdotes. Say, Kanaya, did you know that Willem DeFoe's character was filmed three separate ways during each scene he was in, once where he was sure Patrick was the killer, once where he was sure Patrick was innocent, and once where he wasn't sure either way, and then the three takes were spliced together, changing randomly each cut? No? You didn't know that? Of course you didn't know that, this is a Terran film, made with Terran filming techniques and Terran actors, like Willem DeFoe. Rose was bursting at the seams to show off her knowledge of intricate minutiae of horror movies - did you know that the Ghostface mask used in Scream was originally a generic Halloween mask produced by a middling-tier mask company, only to explode in popularity due to the movie? Did you know Hellraiser was originally titled "Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave"? Did you? Did you know, Kanaya?

But bereft of all cultural context, she came to the inevitable, somewhat painful conclusion that Kanaya would not understand a word of what she meant, nor be in the slightest impressed. Rose wasn't even sure why she wanted to impress Kanaya other than the general people pleaser inside of her that wanted to impress everyone in some way, the same sort of person that sat on her shoulder, preparing to sob and scream their lungs out whenever she perceived that anyone in any way was rejecting her even in the slightest amount, an issue she had mostly gotten over with the help of medication but was now flaring back up. She considered her options and winced quietly at herself in the process, not having any of her traditional alleyways to impress individuals outside of mentioning her name, which, again, meant nothing to this strange alien woman. Oh, how this was so difficult!

Rose wasn't even paying attention to the movie, to be honest. Yes, she thought it was an enthralling satirical thriller capturing the worst excesses of the Yuppie movement and putting them to screen in a radical exaggeration of their casual homicidalism, turning their distaste for the poor and downtrodden that lead to passive acceptance of their skyrocketing deaths into a very literal manifestation of upper-economic rage through Patrick Bateman - it was an incredible film on all regards, and as a result, she had seen it about fifteen times already. She could recite it line by line. It was no The Thing, no In The Mouth Of Madness (both of which she had watched, enraptured, almost 30 times - each), no The Fly (26 times), but still, by all regards, a fairly exceptional film, in her humble opinion. No, the only thing she was paying attention to was the way Kanaya felt underneath her, the way she could feel the strange triplet heartbeat of Kanaya's veins inside her throat, so intricately distinct from her own duple meter. Th-thu-THUMP, Th-thu-THUMP, repeat ad nauseum - but Rose would never feel nauseous about this. No, the only thing she was rapt at attention for was Kanaya.

And… was that perfume? Rose had no idea what sort of person Kanaya was yet, other than the fact that she was a little bit prissy (in a good way), and that she was tall and limber and willowy in all the exact ways Rose wasn't, but the idea that Kanaya might have wanted to make a good first impression as well was beginning to dawn on her. This close to Kanaya, she could smell something that was, frankly, making her mouth sort of watery. It provoked a bodily reaction not akin to smelling delicious food (delicious food that was, hopefully, arriving soon), a scent that was indescribable with her human chemical compound words, at least not in any way that applied to scent words. It smelled… rich. It smelled luxurious, it smelled good, but not in a way she had ever smelled before. The closest thing she could put her fingers onto was that it smelled vaguely sweet, almost like pie, and Rose let her eyes drift shut just a little bit as she breathed in slowly through her nose, inhaling Kanaya's perfume. It put her at ease, some part of her brain knowing that Kanaya was trying just as hard as Rose was, if not harder.

After all, Rose hadn't even considered perfume.

Rose almost jumped fifteen feet in the air when Kanaya turned her face towards Rose, as if she was noticing for the first time that, yes, Rose was leaning on her, even if the rest of Rose's limbs were kept politely away from the rest of Kanaya's body. "Are you comfortable, Rose Lalonde?" She asked, softly and quietly, her voice taking on a distinctly motherly, caring sort of tone that made something in Rose's spine tingle and her brain do flips and convolutions.

Electricity shattered through her brain, down her spinal column, while she struggled for an answer, trying to pry one out of the aether where one did not exist previously. What do you say to a question like that, one clearly intended to tease and disarm, immediately giving Kanaya advantage on Rose's mental flighty broads and their snarky horseshit-o-meter? Is there any answer you could humanly give that wouldn't sound in some way, small or otherwise, like a capitulation? Rose couldn't think of one fast enough - if one existed, it wasn't coming to her. "Yes, very. You have a comfortable shoulder - is this a problem?"

"Not at all - I'm just curious for your species's capacity for pale gestures, that's all. You're free to continue if you want." Kanaya offered, and Rose greedily accepted, putting her face back against Kanaya's shoulder, pressing her arm into Kanaya's arm, trying her damndest to be even the slightest bit "subtle" about it.

"Pale? Does that… mean something other than "bereft of color"?" Rose asked, after a moment of thought. Kanaya chuckled, and Rose could feel the chuckle - traveling up from a spot deep in Kanaya's core and into her chest, and from there, out her throat, a low, slow vibration that teased and tickled her ears in the most pleasing way that a chuckle ever had.

"Pale… like the category of romance?" Kanaya asked. Rose could hear the eyebrow being raised, without needing to see it directly.

Rose tapped her translator quietly to make sure it was picking up correctly. "Romance? Correct term? Like, dating?"

"Romance, correct term, yes. Platonic gestures of romance, like brushing a partner's hair, chaste cuddling, perhaps even leaning on the shoulder of another for support during a trying time." Kanaya explained, gesturing slowly with her free hand. Rose could feel Kanaya's head turning towards her and grew hot with shame at the mention of leaning on shoulders for support.

A trying time indeed. "No, I mean. Yes, obviously. But we just call that platonic intimacy, I don't think anyone here really considers that a kind of "romance". Independently, it's not something that benefits in sexual selection by itself, it's more… orthogonal to the concept."

"Interesting. I--" Kanaya began, almost immediately getting cut off by a loud knock at the door. When she got up, letting Rose flop down to the couch, Rose almost felt a _whine_ leave her, like an abandoned puppy, building up in her chest and preparing to bubble out from her mouth. This was deeply, hideously uncharacteristic of her, so Rose's immediate suspicion was that she was drugged at some point, perhaps with some kind of mind control gas being pumped by the government through the piping or air conditioning unit. Everything in the past thirty minutes immediately became coated in a thin layer of suspicion like grease on your countertop after frying some homemade chicken fingers without a splatter-guard, and the grease had begun forming into a fine layer of sticky solidified gunk.

Something fucky was going on, and Rose didn't like it. Kanaya turned to her and smiled. "That must be the food - I'll get it?"

"Please do." Rose responded, remaining where she was on the couch, arms folded in front of her as Kanaya walked towards the door.

**Author's Note:**

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